Critical
Unrealism

Edited and mainly written by Roy Bhaskar, this short book seeks to
explore the relation between Bhaskar's critical realist philosophy
and the political project of socialist emancipation. Its real
importance, however, is that it constitutes a statement of the
philosophico-political project of the grouping that calls itself The
Socialist Movement. For this reason alone it deserves serious attention.

In the first two chapters, which outline Bhaskar's critical realism
and its political applications, a form of critical realism is
advocated, one which, it is argued, underpins the politics of
socialist emancipation. Critical realism, it is claimed, penetrates
below superficial surface appearances to reveal enduring structures
and generative mechanisms. Critical realism stresses what it sees as
the 'transformative nature' of social activity and a 'relational'
conception of society. Social systems are, from this point of view,
intrinsically open and so essentially subject to the possibility of
transformation. It is this that makes socialism possible. Socialism
itself is seen as the result, not of the amelioration of states of
affairs within a given social structure, but of the actual
transformation of those structures. This in turn underlies the
opposition of Bhaskar and his comrades to post 1945 social-democratic
government and to stalinism.

The critical realist view appears to start off on the right track,
stressing the historical nature of all social institutions, the
market included. It is argued, for example that the market is not
natural or given but socially and historically specific. From this,
however, the conclusion is drawn that market relations are compatible
with human emancipation: 'Emancipatory socialist action will involve
transforming the market - more precisely, abolishing some markets,
socialising and democratising others' (p.30). Rejecting the
'market-socialism' of Alec Nove and the 'market-less socialism' of
Ernest Mandel, Bhaskar et al opt for the 'socialised market'
proposed by Diane
Elson (in New Left Review
172, Nov-Dec 1988).

A political project that is essentially uncritical of the value form
must be rejected but it is necessary to be clear on what grounds.
What is needed is not a merely abstract dismissal of the conclusions
reached - the 'socialised market' - but criticism of the premises
from which these conclusions arise. This is no easy task for these
premises include ones that many communists would share. Politically,
the acceptance of the 'socialised market' flows from rejection of
stalinist and social democratic administration. But it has
theoretical roots as well. The argument for the 'socialised market'
starts off from the legitimate concern to reject all 'reified'
conceptions of the market. It is argued that the market is neither
natural nor given and nor is it unchanging. The market has taken on
different forms at different times in history and in different
societies. And as an empirical observation, it must be conceded that
this is true. Bhaskar's political conclusions cannot be refuted by
appeal to the unchanging nature of the market. More than that,
however, Bhaskar's concern to reject all 'reified' conceptions of the
market has a resonance with the concerns of those writers in Radical
Chains who have opposed the 'naturalisation' of the laws of
capital (see Dixon and Gorman in Radical
Chains 3).

There is here a resonance but also a dissonance. The two projects
meet and also part. Bhaskar and the other philosophers of The
Socialist Movement are critical of the reification of 'the market'
and conclude that the market can be 'socialised'. For those writers
who have taken up the question in Radical
Chains, by contrast, the concern has been to understand how
the laws of capital have been transformed by and have in turn
transformed conscious activity. From this follows the need to abolish
the value form and all surrogates for it. The Socialist Movement
philosophers derive their categories from sociology and economics and
not from the critique of political economy. Where the Radical
Chainsproject is concerned with the understanding of a
system or totality of interlocking social relations, Bhaskar and
company see instead a mere aggregation or collection of relations
that are subject to an open set of permutations. This can be seen in
Bhaskar's description of the socialised market: 'It involves public
ownership and worker-managed enterprises with a basic wage guaranteed
irrespective of work, in exchange for domestic or caring labour, with
labour, producer goods and consumer goods markets, subject to
over-all planning norms and with market-making undertaken by publicly
funded bodies and backed up by buyer-seller information networks' (p.28-29).

The Socialist Movement wants to abolish the market in capital but
retain the market in labour. At the same time, however, it wants to
guarantee a basic wage 'irrespective of work'. How is the circle to
be squared? A socialist project that wants to retain the labour
market does not anticipate the emancipation of human activities,
needs, and desires from external discipline. It has, in fact, no
conception of real human emancipation. A 'basic wage guaranteed
irrespective of work' is, however, incompatible with money mediation,
the discipline of the law of value. If needs can be met without
recourse to wage labour people will not exchange their labour power
for a wage. To this extent the law of value is partially suspended.
Yet in so far as society is still subject to the pressure of the law
of value, to the extent that there is still a market in labour power,
people must be forced to work. Administrative structures will
proliferate as the socialist regime strives to make the recognition
of needs compatible with the discipline of the law of value. If the
regime is not to succumb to crisis, the extent of needs recognition
will have to be reduced. Necessarily the socialist regime comes into
opposition to the class of producers.

If this sounds familiar it is only because it replicates, at a higher
level of decay, the inadequacies of the social democratic project
that it rejects. It replicates the inadequacies of that project and
also takes over its language and categories. The references to
'over-all planning norms' and 'publicly funded bodies', 'public
ownership and worker-managed enterprises' indicate the degree of
dependence on previous outmoded projects. Planning is equated with
the activities of the organisers of labour and not with the activity
and subjectivity of the producers themselves. The project does not
point to the future but appears to try to salvage the wreckage of the
past. The philosophers of The Socialist Movement are unable to
identify class subjects with a potential for self-emancipation and
thus cannot conceive of the transcendence of value relations. Thus
they are condemned to become, if anything, the guardians of absolute
poverty in decline. Market relations and the laws of capital are
subject to change and transformation but the possibilities are not
endless. At some point the questions of power and supersession must
and will be posed.

If the first two chapters are devoted to outlining the basic ideas of
critical realism and their application, chapters three to five
examine the relative merits also of critical theory and
postmodernism. This takes the form of a debate between Roy Bhaskar,
William Outhwaite and Kate Soper. Bhaskar's contribution consists of
a critique of Habermas (the representative of critical theory) and of
Rorty (who represents postmodernism). The form of this critique is
very much apparent but its content is elusive. For Bhaskar, Habermas
'remains ensnared in the antinomy of transcendental pragmatism'. He
'tacitly inherits a positivist ontology and an
instrumentalist-manipulative conception' of the natural sciences and
the sphere of labour (p.34). Habermas's system 'readily takes on a
dualistic overly anti-naturalist hue' while Rorty 'remains wedded to
a positivist account of the natural sciences'. Rorty, moreover,
'erects a Nietzschean superstructure (as a superidealist
"epistemology") in the guise of an undifferentiated
"linguistified" monism on a Humean-Hempelean ontological
base' (p.35).

This is a lot of '-ists' and '-eans' to be crammed into less than two
pages of text. It is not, however, the result of trying to distil the
essence of his longer works into a small space. Readers of Bhaskar's
weightier tomes,--The Possibility of Naturalism, for
example--will have noticed the same tendency at work there. The
suspicion is that the adjectives--'positivist', 'Nietzschean',
'superidealist', and so on - are doing all the work. They are
surrogates for real argument. What exactly is a 'dualist overly
anti-naturalist hue'? How would you recognise a 'superidealist
epistemology' if you encountered one? Bhaskar would seem to
presuppose more knowledge on the part of the reader than could be
deemed to be reasonable. Perhaps he could have provided a glossary,
or better, an index of -isms.

Yet there is something less than humorous about these procedures. To
say that someone's philosophy 'readily takes on a dualistic overly
naturalistic hue' is not to argue a point but to refuse debate. It is
a form of intellectual policing, the outcome of which cannot be a
broadening of views or an exchange of ideas. In it, however, there is
more than an echo of Stalin's denunciation of the economist I. I.
Rubin for 'Menshevising idealism'.

After all this, Outhwaite's response appears initially as a breath of
fresh air, his chapter opening promisingly with an unpretentious
attempt to unravel the relation between critical realism and critical
theory. This soon degenerates into an attempt to show that Bhaskar
and Habermas have more in common than is normally thought. The
purpose and relevance of the exercise is unclear.

The most interesting of the last three chapters is Soper's discussion
of postmodernism, critical realism and critical theory. Soper
identifies postmodernism as a response to the experience of fascism,
stalinism and what she describes as the 'nuclear age and looming
ecological crisis' (p.43). These, she argues, have generated doubt,
scepticism and a questioning of Enlightenment rationality and
conceptions of progress. These real concerns are expressed in the
postmodern consciousness. Yet, with postmodernism, conceived not just
as a form of social consciousness but as a philosophical project,
these legitimate concerns are subjected to a kind of 'theoretical
overdrive'. In the end it invites us to 'disown the very aspiration
to truth as something unobtainable in principle' (p.45). Thus it
degenerates into a total relativism and a form of libertarianism or
anarchism 'of distinctly New Rightist overtones' (p.46).

Soper's distinction between postmodernism as a spirit of the age and
as an intellectual project is useful. However, while recognising the
socio-historical roots of the postmodern consciousness, Soper deals
with postmodernism only as an intellectual concern. Thus she appears
to think that it can be overcome by showing it to be logically
incoherent. But a critique which addresses only the relativism and
libertarianism of postmodernism is not sufficient. We need to
understand the social processes necessary to the breakdown of the
current condition of disorientation and to the emergence of a new
rationality. If this cannot be done, then criticism is limited to an
essentially conservative reaction, an attempt to restore what is in
fact irretrievable.

Soper's predicament, however, highlights a problem that is general.
The supposed task of the project seems to be that of rectifying 'the
error of reification' (p.9) or 'illusory or false consciousness'
(p.11). It is as if socialist thought develops autonomously of human
social relations, that intellectual work is not subject to the same
processes that supposedly mystify everyone else. This goes together
with a lack of recognition of social subjectivity. Bhaskar says that
his contribution is 'part of the longer term project of recapturing
the intellectual high ground' (p.7). It is difficult to avoid
concluding that he thinks that intellectual hegemony is enough. There
is no recognition that individuals must transform society and so
transform themselves.

The book is presented as a contribution to the process of socialist
're-thinking' and in particular as a response to the collapse of
stalinism in the USSR and Eastern Europe and the weakening of the
national liberation movements in the Third World (p.5). Yet the
general impression is that the philosophers of The Socialist Movement
remain trapped within the old perspectives. There is no real break
here with the old practices of administrative intervention and the
concern to socialise the market merely echoes the current
preoccupations of the Soviet elite.